Formula 1’s often-mooted return to Montreal appears to be moving closer to fruition after Bernie Ecclestone gave a firm indication that the race will be included on next year’s calendar.
The Canadian round was dropped from this year’s schedule following a contractual dispute between Ecclestone and the event’s former promoter, but senior government figures led efforts to revive it almost immediately and sent several delegations to London to meet the F1 ringmaster.
Their overtures seemed to have been rebuffed until earlier this week, when Ecclestone was quoted in various media outlets as saying that he planned to reinstate the race after all.
“We will return to Canada in 2010,” he told Swiss publication Motorsport Aktuell.
“I know everyone connected with Formula 1 loves this grand prix.”
He told Canada’s CBC Radio that “we have an in-principle agreement of how we’re going to make the race happen”.
Montreal officials are more cautious about the race’s prospects, playing down suggestions of a breakthrough in negotiations and indicating that there remains a gap what they are willing to pay in sanctioning fees and Ecclestone’s asking price.
“There are discussions ongoing with the city, Quebec and Ottawa, and we’re not going to discuss the framework publicly, other than to say it respects the offer that was previously put forward,” said a spokesman for the city’s mayor Gerald Tremblay.
“We want the return of the grand prix to Montreal, but not at any price.”
Arguments about the financial terms of staging the race had been simmering for several years before the axe fell last October amid claims that the organisers had defaulted on payments to Ecclestone over a three-year period.
Event officials admitted there had been a “commercial disagreement” regarding the 2008 race, but insisted they had fulfilled their contractual obligations in previous years.
The first serious bid to rescue the race failed last November after Ecclestone demanded a government or bank guarantee of C$175m over five years, while Montreal was only willing to pay $110m – raised from a mixture of public and private sources – plus a share of any profits.
Ecclestone refused to yield, claiming the terms offered by the city were “not economically viable” and insisting on the need for “the performance of the race promoter [to] be fully guaranteed or underwritten by the government, the city and/or institution of sound financial repute”.
The mayor said at the time: “Despite our endeavours and those of the business community, the unreasonable demands of Formula 1 exceeded the taxpayer’s ability to pay.”
Now, however, Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper is reporting that a new deal is on the table worth $75m over five years, plus a promise to pay the sums owed to Formula One Administration under the previous arrangement.
The decision to scrap the popular Montreal fixture was not well received in the F1 paddock, and the sport’s car manufacturers have been increasingly vocal about the need to return to the lucrative North American market so that they can get a better return on their investment.
In its statement earlier this week welcoming the signing of a new Concorde Agreement, the Formula One Teams’ Association said: “[Our] attention will now turn to other issues we believe to be in the long-term interest of F1: racing at the best tracks in front of the biggest audiences and expanding F1’s reach.”
Montreal typically attracted a sellout crowd of 300,000 over the three-day meeting, and it was widely noted that the event that took its slot in this year’s schedule – Turkey – was so poorly attended that organisers resorted to covering grandstands with tarpaulins to disguise the empty seats.
The business model of F1’s commercial rights holder CVC envisages race staging fees rising by almost 10% year on year, but in the current depressed economic climate and given the pressure being applied by the sport’s teams and carmakers, it appears that Montreal may be granted a discounted rate.
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